Selling an ebook - what's the point?!

You took the words right out of my mouth, Caliban. It wouldn't take too much additional work to package and enhance the ebook material in some other medium such as video, but as you have mentioned people are lazy by nature, and want the instant gratification that comes from quickly writing it as an ebook and then selling it here as a WSO, or elsewhere.

Paul

What Steve mentioned were valid too.

If you're really into this, I can talk about this for a whole day, but in a nutshell, it's called the "loss leader" model.

A lot of people that I know, have huge success with this method.

Jason Morgan has just replied you with a good point, they do those FREE or LOW PRICED front end offer to get you into their list. Why, and how can they do that? Because they have endless of content supplies!

Apart from what you called the "homework" or "tasks", there are so many other things that you can give people for value.

How about doing a real life workshop and talking about "how to make them stop barking"? Record that as a video and then roll it out as a higher ticket product?

Slowly, if you're doing it the right way, you will be come a so-called expert or amateur pro in a particular niche or topic. And then you will have endless of content to supply your audience with.

My coach once told me : "Just make sure you have a lot of things to give out, so you can give one of your best on the front-end, and still have a lot to give on the back-end". That was so true.

Well, in anyway, I hope you're not "lazy" to achieve whatever you want, whether it's in a monetary form or it was just to add another portfolio, or a milestone to your own journey.

Best wishes.

Aiden Chong

While you can package your product quite easily as an autoresponder course, the higher price point that you'll be charging for the subscription is going to require sales copy which is dramatically better as well. Creating the product is just one part of the equation, and one thing you have to remember is that you can have a salesletter which isn't all that great (sometimes it can even be quite crappy) and still have decent conversions on a cheap $7 or under $20 ebook.

When you're dealing with an autoresponder course that is presumably going to cost over $20 (I'd think much more than that), it's going to require a lot more work on your sales copy. You can't just slap something up in a heartbeat and hope to have good conversions on a $40 or higher product.

So, as you can see, there'll be more work involved not only in creating the product, but you'll also have to spend a lot more time on the salesletter and probably split-test several different variations in order to optimize conversions, whereas with a cheap $7 product as long as your salesletter isn't pure crap, you'll definitely be able to pick up some sales without trying too hard.

Paul

It's not, but you don't have to do it, so a lot of people don't.

I can fire up a camera and record a "talking head" video or a screencast in about five minutes. But it would be better for most people if I did a PowerPoint video plus screencast, so I'd rather do that. Trouble is, I need about six hours to do that. Meanwhile, all the time I'm saying "I need to make that video," my ebook is sitting there making me no money at all.

Not much more work, really. Would justify a higher price point. Would make my customers happier. But the work needs to be done, and if I don't want to do it and probably won't do it, why sit on the ebook? Put out the ebook, and then when I finish the videos I can email all the customers and say "hey, guess what, I did videos."

And then I can either ask them for more money to get the videos, or just give them the videos free and raise the price for the next wave of customers. I personally prefer the latter.

Well, follow it through.

I give away this ebook, and when you say "gimme!" I say "hey, while you're here, want to buy this $17 product?" - and some of them do.

I upsell with an offer to buy an additional bundled product for $47 total.

Then I send them to the download page, where they see unadvertised free bonuses plus banners for two affiliate products related to mine... and they might buy one or both of them. Each of those has an upsell of its own.

And after about a week on my list, I offer them a discount on another product, which many of them buy at $32.

So while you see "free ebook," I see "possible $79 sale and up to $80 affiliate commission." That "free" ebook could turn into over $150 in less than a week. Averaging out sales through this funnel across all people who went through it, the average revenue per signup on this is about $12.

True, more than half of them just take the free ebook and run off, and a good number of those never even confirm on the list. But of the ones who actually buy something, the average sale is about $30.

And those people go on a different list. So I can tell who they are, and offer them deals the freebie seekers don't get.

It's not just the sales page that matters. It's the sales funnel behind it.

The OP also forgets to take into account that selling even a cheap ebook will help build his list of buyers that he can market to over and over again. Of course, having a complete and well thought out sales funnel that starts with the ebook would be even better, but just building a list of targeted buyers of a cheap ebook will yield far greater returns than just the immediate price paid for it.

Paul

D Maind,

Thanks for the words, but it doesn't really have to be ended at the $200 coaching program.

Take Brendon Burchard's expertise as an example, his lowest price point that I can see is FREE, not a $7 dollar report LOL...

His average pricing for his courses were being sold not less than $1500, I guess.

Now that's another whole new level of things, and that's how we should POSITION ourselves too. Maybe we have been selling ourselves short for too long time. There are tons of other people craving for the same $7 report that they would have paid for 3 figures outside of the online world - a.k.a the OFFLINE WORLD.

Aiden Chong

I've actually found that freebie-seekers are worth more than people seem to think - because they are committed enough to download your report, which means on some level they want to hear what you're saying and learn what you're teaching.

For many of these people, going for the freebie instead of buying your product is just a way to reduce their risk, not to try and get something for nothing. I've seen several people download a freebie, then come back a few hours later and buy three or four products.